What is the difference between layer2 and layer3 devices

MLA 8 Khillar, Sagar. Hello I am student of BCA. I completely understand these layers. All layers are work on the OSI model. And here you simply explain the differences and layer 3 between them. Thanks for sharing these helpful lines. Thank you very much for the simple explanation of the these switches came in handy for my assignment.

Good article. Name required. Email required. Please note: comment moderation is enabled and may delay your comment. There is no need to resubmit your comment. Notify me of followup comments via e-mail. Written by : Sagar Khillar. Ethernet Switches. Print [1]Spurgeon, Charles and Joann Zimmerman. Print [2]Hartpence, Bruce. Packet Guide to Routing and Switching. Print [3]Arregoces, Mauricio and Maurizio Portolani.

Data Center Fundamentals. Indianapolis: Cisco Press, User assumes all risk of use, damage, or injury. You agree that we have no liability for any damages. What is Layer 2 Switch? What is Layer 3 Switch? Difference between Layer 2 and Layer 3 Switch Switching vs. Author Recent Posts. Sagar Khillar. He has that urge to research on versatile topics and develop high-quality content to make it the best read. Thanks to his passion for writing, he has over 7 years of professional experience in writing and editing services across a wide variety of print and electronic platforms.

The possible uses for Layer 3 switches are many. While they have primarily been used in data centers and large campus network environments, more applications and networks today are able to benefit from the extreme power of a Layer 3 switch. Providing unmatched scale is one of the first benefits to using a Layer 3 switch.

These are made for large networks utilizing many more Layer 2 switches with large numbers of users all at once. Utilizing 10G uplinks between Layer 3 switches or Link Aggregation on switches without 10G uplinks gives the network the ability to handle the increasing number of high bandwidth applications available today.

Layer 3 switches also provide the ability to offload work from your main router. In a topology set up with one router and one Layer 3 switch, the Layer 3 switch can be configured to handle all inter-VLAN routing. With this processing burden taken off of the router, more of its resources can be dedicated to handling LAN to WAN traffic and Firewall rules. Many new AV applications are taking advantage of Layer 3 switches for their power and features specific to this level of switch. For advanced audio over IP distributions the use of QoS to prioritize the audio and timing traffic is a key requirement.

This can also easily max out the bandwidth available in uplinks between switches. In the past this was done entirely on the router, utilizing resources that could be used for WAN to LAN communications. With Layer 3 switches this inter-VLAN traffic can now be processed at the switch rather than the gateway router. This is where Static Routing and Dynamic Routing come in. Both of these functions provide network applications with a very powerful method of routing traffic between LANs and also a way to scale out in order to support very large and complex networks.

One more important function of the Layer 3 switch is future proofing the network from bandwidth bottlenecks. As bandwidth usage increases within the network and 1G ports are utilized to their maximum capacity, we can no longer rely on 1G uplinks to handle moving this traffic around the network.

Soon wireless access points will be able to handle more than 1G of aggregate bandwidth which is more than most networks can handle. Report a Bug. Previous Prev. Next Continue. Home Testing Expand child menu Expand.

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